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A book sales club is a subscription-based method of selling and purchasing books. It is more often called simply a book club, a term that is also used to describe a book discussion club, which can cause confusion.
Each member of a book sales club agrees to receive books by mail and pay for them as they are received. This may be done by means of negative option billing, in which the customer receives an announcement of the book, or books, along with a form to notify the seller if the customer does not want the book: if the customer fails to return the form by a specified date, the seller will ship the book and expect the customer to pay for it. Alternatively, the business may operate via a "positive option", in which the customer is periodically sent a list of books offered, but none is sent until the customer specifically orders them. The offer of a free book, often a large one, is a frequent enticement to membership. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary for years served this purpose. Some clubs offer new members other (non-book) free gifts, such as book notes or reading lights.
Some book sales clubs are "continuity" clubs, which send members a certain number of books (selected by the club or the member) every month until the membership expires or is cancelled. Harlequin Book Clubs are typical of such clubs. Other book sales clubs are "commitment" clubs, which require members to order a certain number of books in order to fulfill the membership obligation and cancel the membership. Most Book-of-the-Month Clubs are commitment clubs.
Book sales clubs typically sell books at a sizable discount from their list prices. Often, the books sold are editions created specifically for sale by the clubs, and are manufactured more cheaply and less durably than the regular editions. [1]
The Book-of-the-Month Club (founded 1926) is an early and well known example of this kind of business. Others include the Science Fiction Book Club, the Mystery Book Club, and the Quality Paperback Book Club, all of which are run by Booksonline / Doubleday Entertainment (a subsidiary of Bookspan). The largest book of the month clubs had millions of members.
Time-Life book produced a large number of book series in the book sales club format, including the Time Reading Program.
During the 20th century British book clubs included the Book Club, the Left Book Club, the Right Book Club, Collins Crime Club, Book Club Associates (BCA), The Reprint Society, the Readers' Union, the Travel Book Club, [2] Others included the Companion Book Club, the Sportsman's Book Club, the Science Fiction Book Club, the History Book Club, the Victorian and Modern History Book Club, the Catholic Book Club, the Garden Book Club, the Thriller Book Club, [3] and the Folio Society.
In 19th-century Britain, the term book club was sometimes applied to text publication societies. Like the modern clubs, these were membership organizations whose members would receive publications automatically in return for their subscriptions. The books were usually scholarly editions of old works of historical or literary interest, or of archival records, which had been edited and published specifically (and often exclusively) for distribution to society members. The oldest of these societies was the highly exclusive Roxburghe Club, founded in London in 1812. Although many of the 19th-century societies have ceased to exist, others (including the Roxburghe Club) continue to operate, and new societies continue to be founded. The modern societies mostly focus on publishing editions of archival records, and are now more usually known as record or records societies.
20th century book clubs in the U.S. included Book League of America, the Literary Guild, the Junior Library Guild, the Mystery Book Club, the Science Fiction Book Club, the Book of the Month Club, the Quality Paperback Book Club, Reese's Book Club, and Treble Clef and Book Lovers' Club (TCBLC).
German book clubs have included Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft (WBG) and French book clubs have included the Club français du livre.
Baen Books is an American publishing house for science fiction and fantasy. In science fiction, it emphasizes space opera, hard science fiction, and military science fiction. The company was established in 1983 by science fiction publisher and editor Jim Baen. After his death in 2006, he was succeeded as publisher by long-time executive editor Toni Weisskopf.
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly since October 12, 1931. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and nonfiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.
A paperback book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardback (hardcover) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic.
A romance novel or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primary focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have contributed to the development of this genre include Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë.
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback book is one bound with rigid protective covers. It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Modern hardcovers may have the pages glued onto the spine in much the same way as paperbacks. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk.
A bestseller is a book or other media noted for its top selling status, with bestseller lists published by newspapers, magazines, and book store chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and specialties. An author may also be referred to as a bestseller if their work often appears in a list. Well-known bestseller lists in the U.S. are published by Publishers Weekly, USA Today, The New York Times, and IndieBound. The New York Times tracks book sales from national and independent bookstores, as well as sales from major internet retailers such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. The Association also promotes crime writing of fiction and non-fiction by holding annual competitions, publicising literary festivals and establishing links with libraries, booksellers and other writer organisations, both in the UK such as the Society of Authors, and overseas. The CWA enables members to network at its annual conference and through its regional chapters as well as through dedicated social media channels and private website. Members' events and general news items are published on the CWA website, which also features Find An Author, where CWA members are listed and information provided about themselves, their books and their awards.
The Literary Guild of America is a mail order book club selling low-cost editions of selected current books to its members. Established in 1927 to compete with the Book of the Month Club, it is currently owned by Bookspan. It was a way to encourage reading among the American public through curated and affordable selections.
Gay pulp fiction, or gay pulps, refers to printed works, primarily fiction, that include references to male homosexuality, specifically male gay sex, and that are cheaply produced, typically in paperback books made of wood pulp paper; lesbian pulp fiction is similar work about women. Michael Bronski, the editor of an anthology of gay pulp writing, notes in his introduction, "Gay pulp is not an exact term, and it is used somewhat loosely to refer to a variety of books that had very different origins and markets". People often use the term to refer to the "classic" gay pulps that were produced before about 1970, but it may also be used to refer to the gay erotica or pornography in paperback book or digest magazine form produced since that date.
A text publication society is a learned society which publishes scholarly editions of old works of historical or literary interest, or archival documents. In addition to full texts, a text publication society may publish translations, calendars and indexes.
A circulating library lent books to subscribers, and was first and foremost a business venture. The intention was to profit from lending books to the public for a fee.
Sol Stein was the author of 13 books and was Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Stein and Day Publishers for 27 years.
Junior Library Guild, formerly the Junior Literary Guild, is a commercial book club devoted to juvenile literature. It was created in 1929 as one of the enterprises of the Literary Guild, an adult book club created in 1927 by Samuel W. Craig and Harold K. Guinzburg. Book clubs often marketed books to libraries as well, and by the 1950s the majority of the Junior Literary Guild's sales were to libraries. In 1988, the name was changed to the Junior Library Guild to reflect this change in the company's business.
Soulless is a steampunk paranormal romance novel by Gail Carriger. First published in the United States on October 1, 2009 by Orbit Books, Soulless is the first book in the five-novel "The Parasol Protectorate" series, each featuring Alexia Tarabotti, a woman without a soul, as its lead character. A finalist for several literary awards and a recipient of the 2010 Alex Award, Soulless was declared by Publishers Weekly to be one of the "Best Books of 2009". A manga adaptation of the first 3 volumes of the novel was published by Yen Press in July 2011.
The Litigators is a 2011 legal thriller novel by John Grisham, his 25th fiction novel overall. The Litigators is about a two-partner Chicago law firm attempting to strike it rich in a class action lawsuit over a cholesterol reduction drug by a major pharmaceutical drug company. The protagonist is a Harvard Law School grad big law firm burnout who stumbles upon the boutique and joins it only to find himself litigating against his old law firm in this case. The book is regarded as more humorous than most of Grisham's prior novels.
Edward Vernon Utterson was a British lawyer, literary antiquary, collector and editor. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, one of the original members of the Roxburghe Club, a member of the Athenaeum Club, Camden Society and Royal Society of Arts, Recorder of Chichester and a Trustee of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. He went on to become one of the Six Clerks in Chancery, a position which he kept until his retirement on the abolition of the post in 1842, and also founded the Beldornie Press.
David Wadsworth Ball is an American author whose novels include Empires of Sand (1999), China Run (2002) and Ironfire (2004). His short story, The Scroll, was published in Warriors (2010), and Warriors 2 (2010), anthologies assembled by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. The short story Provenance was included in an anthology entitled Rogues, published by Bantam Spectra in 2014.
As of 2018, several firms in the United States rank among the world's biggest publishers of books in terms of revenue: Cengage Learning, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill Education, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley.
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) is a memoir by American attorney Bryan Stevenson that documents his career defending disadvantaged clients. The book, focusing on injustices in the United States judicial system, alternates chapters between documenting Stevenson's efforts to overturn the wrongful conviction of Walter McMillian and his work on other cases, including children who receive life sentences, and other poor or marginalized clients.
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